THURSDAY NIGHT at midnight: At least 14 moviegoers were killed and 50 injured at a cinema in the Colorado city of Aurora in the Denver suburbs. They were attending a midnight showing of the new Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises.

The theater was packed with a lot of people, many of them young fans, at the time the shooting started, 9news reports. The violence erupted some 15 minutes after the movie began, witnesses said.

Ten of the victims were killed right on the spot while four others died from injuries in hospital.